MIDI Accordion Questions
AcrdionMan
>Does anyone have a MIDI synthesizer to recommend? Could a PC with a sound
>board do any good?
Some of the PC sound cards are pretty impressive in terms of their
features. However, a PC is not designed as a low noise, musical
instrument environment. (All the digital electronics inside a PC puts a
lot of EMI crap in the air and on the power lines within the PC case. A
professional instrument would be more carefully shielded and filtered to
result in a lower noise floor on the output). So, I would not use a PC
card as an instrument for recording. However, if you just want it for
your own personal enjoyment, it could be fine.
Alan Polivka
COLLINS DOUGLAS WAITE
look at a MIDI accordion system with the intent of an eventual purchase,
I thought a few questions were in line. I recently visited with a
gentleman who deals accordions. His selection included the Monarch, a
beautiful piece of technological wizardry mixed within a box of
traditional wonder. The gentleman was pleasant but insisted I should go
with similar equipment because from his experience, this was the best
sounding setup for the price. After he played a few numbers from his
repertoire, I was most impressed with the instrument.
I was hoping there was enough collective experience on-line to give me a
well rounded perspective on these instruments. Who makes them, and what
kind of options are available?
Does anyone have a MIDI synthesizer to recommend? Could a PC with a sound
board do any good?
And with regards to economy, where might a used one be found?
Thanks for any information.
Doug
House of Musical Traditions Inc
>Does anyone have a MIDI synthesizer to recommend? Could a PC with a sound
>board do any good?
>
>And with regards to economy, where might a used one be found?
Here is a list of midi accordion resources that I know of; I'm sure you can
compare and get answers to all your questions from these people. If I were
looking for a midi accordion system myself, from what I've read and heard
people discussing, my choice would be Petosa. They seem to be very highly
thought of and to have lots of experience in this area. Faith Deffner could
probably also answer a lot of your questions, and she hangs out on this ng.
Accordion-A-Rama
212-675-9080
Castiglione Accordion
810-755-6050
Diamond Accordion
206-241-5500
Ernest Deffner Inc
516-746-3100
Hohner Inc
718-497-2660
Petosa Accordions
206-632-2700
Polytone/Spacesonics
818-760-2300
Syn-Cordion
201-568-7943
====================================================
Wendy Morrison, House of Musical Traditions
Email: hmt...@hmtrad.com
On the Web at http://www.hmtrad.com/hmtrad
Wendy's Home for Wayward Accordions: sus...@cais.com
"Music is the best means we have of digesting time."
=====================================================
LouisTanaskovic
now. However, I've been playing a MIDI accordion for 8 years.
My accordion is a 6 row chromatic accordion bought back in 1983
in Milwaukee Wi. and MIDIFIED in 1987. I bought it from BALDONI'S
MUSIC and also had it MIDIFIED there as well. Mr. ALFONSO BALDONI
is probably the best in the mid west area for all kinds of
different accordions and MIDI accordions. Next, there are a
number of MIDI synthesizer modules, synthesizers with out a
keyboard, that can be slaved up to your MIDI accordion. Moreover,
it all depends on the music you are planning to play. If you want
to play music that requires a lot of accoustic timbres such as
trumpet, violin, or a tuba, you are better of purchasing a
quality MIDI SAMPLER.
Here is are some suggestions:
"e64" or EMULATOR series made by E-MU, there is AKAI, ROLAND,
KORG and many other quality MIDI samplers. If on the other hand
you are satisfied with synthesized tibres, there are many
inexpensive MIDI synths modules that can be driven from your MIDI
accordion. Finally, a PC sound card can be used if it has a MIDI
input for your MIDI accordion. However, they are limited with the
number of timbres, have less voices and you can't take them out
on a gig.
Have fun
God Bless
Robert Berta
>quality MIDI SAMPLER.
>Here is are some suggestions:
>"e64" or EMULATOR series made by E-MU, there is AKAI, ROLAND,
>KORG and many other quality MIDI samplers. If on the other hand
I too am a MIDI accordionist. I use an ELKA MIDI II+ MIDI PA along with an
assortment of Roland, EMU and Alesis sound modules.
Currently I find that the Roland products such as the SC-88 tend to have the
best (by a long shot) smorgasboard of accurate accoustic instrument sounds. By
tweaking the sounds with available editing tools I can create amazingly
accurate string instruments, horns, flutes, etc. For piano I use a dedicated
piano module.
You mentioned you use a sampler. Curious which one you use and if so I have
some questions as to its use.
I need to have an assortment of sounds that I can callup on 4 or 5 channels.
These need to be faithful to the actual instruments (as compared to purely
electronic sounds). In particular I am interested in orchestral instruments
and pipe organ since I mostly play classical music.
I need to have access to a pallete of say 127 different sounds that will be
selectred from at any one time in a total number of those sounds of 4 or 5.
I don't have the time to switch disks or take the time to load from hard disk
(don't want to have to use a computer....I already have that capability at
home but on the road is extra clutter.) What this means is that I would have
to be able to store all this information up in RAM memory with no delay in
loading the sounds.
While a sampler sounds interesting, the early sample machines I tested were
limited in the number of sounds that could be retained at the same time and/or
required delays in loading those sounds.
I would be interested in taking a second look if they have greatly increased
their useability for more than the sampling of a couple of sounds or using
sound CDs. Do you have any recommendations of potential canditates? I have
heard the Kurzweill is good as is the Roland. The EMU line may be OK but I
would hesitate based on my past experience with the poor quality sound samples
that they use in their EMU Proteus sound modules. I had a EMU Proteus 1 +
Orchestra which had lots of neat features, and a great user interface. The
accoustic sounds were generally very poor (especially the strings). And they
had a real problem with their note polyphony. While they advertised at 32 note
polyphony, that was only until you cut in something like chorus or used some
of the sounds which used more than single sounds to create the object sound.
This meant that you often ended up with far less than that amount of polyphony
and I was always having to deal with running out of enough polyphony for my
music. Roland for instance, has a much better implementation in this regard
and makes much more use of the available polyphony.
While a sampler sounds great in principle, for the stuff I do I have found
that the newest sound modules have hundreds of excellent samples. Some like
the Roland JV series allow for adding of additional sound cards which are
specific to orchestral, world sounds, strings, pop, etc. Some units can take
up to 4 additional cards which makes for literally thousands of additional
sounds. And of course you can always use available editing to tweak those
sounds to your taste.
Bob Berta
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LouisTanaskovic
old and its quality is highly professional. Now, a sampler is a
device that samples timbres or colors of sounds. If you sample a
clean sound you get a clean sound back. If on the other hand you
sample a distorted sound, you get a distorted sound. I also have
a Proteus 1 module and let me assure you e-64 is much better.
The best way to build custom libraries of the sounds you want, I
have found out is the following: You must have a huge hard disk,
huge RAM and a CD-ROM drive. By using CD-ROMs, you can audition
the timbres you want, then load them into your custom banks on
your sampler and save them. That way you can take the sampler on
the job and leave your CD-ROMs home. The more disk space and RAM
you have the better. Eventually, you can have all your sound on
the sampler and you don't even have to bother with CD-ROMs.
The beauty of E-64 is it can read other formats such as AKAI 1000
sampler's CD-ROMs. There are huge collections of CD-ROMs to
choose from. You can go to your local music store audition a
CD-ROM before you buy it. I would recommend a "KEYBOARD" magazine
for an excellent source of info. on MIDI devices.
Thanks from an accordionist and a MIDIOT.